Historicism – is the realisation of the fact that science, art , literature and culture in general – any cognitive activity – with the necessity accompanied by the establishment of the genesis, origin, formation and development of selected objects for understanding. Historicism – a principle approach to the phenomena of material and spiritual culture in the process of artistic or scientific research. Historicism as a method originated in the era of Romanticism. At the beginning of the development of this concept were F.K. Savigny, W. Grimm , L. von Ranke, as well as the works of the French historians of the Restoration Guizot, Thierry, Mignet. Historicity of human creations and its spiritual component was philosophically under­stood in the XIX century as contained in its existence the possibility of deve­loping and improving as conversion to a creature that is aware of itself as an object , and as the subject of a holistic process of life. Man in the Age of Romanticism stands in unity of time and eternity. Fiction first of all provides aesthetic and ethical values, so literature and axiology are always correlated – history of culture, primarily asserts itself through a system of values. Values of the current stage of development of literature and art cease to be an inclusive, comprehensive, historical changes they have undergone in recent years, become essential that literary text acquired situational. The most important for literary XIX – early XX centuries has always been the problem of establishing the canon of world literature and art, it is most closely connected with the establishment of criteria for literary values, criteria for the selec­tion of texts. The task of choosing the values of world literature masterpieces of all times and peoples naturally leads to the formulation and solution of specific axio­logical problems, to develop the criteria for their selection. Of first importance, of course, are the problems of literary values and those components that indicate that a text is «belles-lettres». Axiology of modern art is concerned with many problems, among which four are decisive: 1. whether literary values conclude only in the literary text, or also in its per­ception; 2. why the value perception of the text comes first in literary criticism and school teaching literature; 3. wtether the ritual, political, «therapeutic» values posess the artistic value; 4. how to distinguish practical and artistic functions of a text using new axiological methods?